The chimera of Prester John was succeeded by the more rational hope of effecting a passage to India by the way of Southern Africa. This great feat, accordingly, was at length achieved by Vasco de Gama, who, in 1497, four years after the discovery of America by Columbus, persisted in his course to the south so far as to double the Cape of Good Hope, and point the way northward into the Indian Ocean. By his voyages and those of his successors, the eastern coast of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope through the Mozambique Channel to the Red Sea, was soon defined as accurately as the western coast had been by the voyages of his predecessors; and thus the entire outline and shape of the African continent were at length made known. This great service to science and to the human race was rendered, it ought to be remarked, by the Portuguese, who may be said to have conducted the enterprise of the circumnavigation of Africa from its beginning to its end; and this is perhaps the greatest contribution which the Portuguese, as a nation, have made to the general fund of human knowledge.
The outline of Africa having thus been laid down on the maps, and the extent of its surface ascertained, the attention of discoverers was next turned to its interior. The efforts made by the Portuguese to explore Nigritia in search of Prester John have been already alluded to; but it was by the other nations of Europe, especially the English, the French, and the Dutch, who, on the decline of the Portuguese power, began to compete with each other in this field of enterprise, that the greatest advances were made in the knowledge of geography of the various parts of Africa, and of the races which inhabit it. For these last two hundred years, discoverers and travelers of various nations have been adding to our information respecting this vast continent; and in consequence of their joint labors, some in one part, some in another, we are now able to form an idea, very general, it must, be admitted, but still tolerably distinct, of Africa and its inhabitants. In presenting a summary view of the progress of African discovery, from the period of the final circumnavigation of the continent, and its correct delineation in outline, down to the present time, it will be advantageous to take up its various divisions in the following order:—Western Africa, Southern Africa, Eastern Africa, Central Africa or Nigritia, and Northern Africa, including the Great Desert.
Western Africa.—The shores of Western Africa, especially those which border the Gulf of Guinea, have retained to the present time the distinction which they acquired at the period of their discovery by the Portuguese, of being the market which European ships visit for African commodities.
The Portuguese, as we have already mentioned, where the first to plant factories along this coast, from the southern termination of the Great Desert to Congo, and other maritime districts south of the equator. Allured by the profits of the slave trade, other European nations hastened to occupy stations on the same coast; and towards the end of the eighteenth century, the number of European forts and factories round the Gulf of Guinea were said to be forty in all; of which fifteen belonged to the Dutch, fourteen to the English, four to the Portuguese, four to the Danes, and three to the French. Deriving its principal commercial importance from the trade in negroes, which this chain of forts was intended to guard, Western Africa has, since the abolition of the slave trade, fallen considerably out of view. According to the best information, however, that has been obtained, ‘the territory is in the possession of a number of petty states, many of which compose aristocratic republics, turbulent, restless, licentious, and generally rendered more depraved by their intercourse with Europeans.’
Proceeding from north to south, let us briefly notice the various countries of the western coast, with the tribes which inhabit them. The most northerly is Senegambia, the name applied to the district watered by the two rivers Senegal and Gambia, commencing from the Desert, and extending as far as the Grain Coast. According to Mungo Park, this territory is inhabited by four tribes—the Feloops, the Jaloffs, the Foulahs, and the Mandingoes. In all these tribes, part are Mohammedans by profession; but the great body of the people are Pagans, called by their Mohammedan brethren Kafirs, or infidels, and practicing the Fetish form of worship; that is, the worship of inanimate objects. The Feloops were described by Park as a gloomy and revengeful race, but honorable and faithful in their dealings with friends; the Jaloffs as an active and warlike people, with jet-black skins, but among the most handsome of the negroes, divided into several principalities, and excelling in the manufacture of cotton cloth; The Foulahs—a race of more importance in Africa than Park imagined—as of a tawny complexion, with soft silky hair and pleasing features, much attached to a pastoral life; and the Mandingoes, who are by far the most numerous people in this part of Africa, as of a mild, sociable, and obliging disposition, the men commonly above the middle-size, well-shaped, strong, and capable of enduring great labor, the women good-natured, sprightly and agreeable.
The tract of country adjoining Senegambia on the south, and stretching along the Gulf of Guinea, from the Grain Coast to the Bight of Biafra, has been named Upper Guinea, and includes, besides the colonies of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory and Gold Coasts, so noted for their unhealthiness, three native states—namely, Ashantee, Dahomey, and Benin. Our information respecting these negro kingdoms is derived from the discoveries of various travelers, among whom may be mentioned Mr. Norris, who undertook a journey to the court of the king of Dahomey in 1772, with the hope of making arrangements beneficial to English trade; Mr. Bowditch, who took part in a mission for a similar purpose to the king of Ashantee in 1817; and Captain Adams, who visited Benin at a later period.
Ashantee is described as a hilly country, well watered by numerous streams, and covered almost entirely with that rich vegetable luxuriance, the labor of removing which, it has been observed, is as severe for the agriculturist as the opposite labor of fertilizing barren lands. The Ashantee negro clears the land by means of fire—thus both removing the rank vegetation, and spreading the soil with a rich manure, which yields two crops a year. Besides innumerable kinds of fruit and flowers, and all the giant trees of the tropics, the productions are sugar, tobacco, maize, rice, yams, and potatoes. All kinds of tropical animals likewise swarm in Ashantee. The human inhabitants of the whole region or empire are estimated at three millions, and though possessing, in a marked degree, some of the worst negro characteristics, they are, upon the whole, more advanced than most of the African tribes, not only practicing a regular and tolerably skilled agriculture, but showing considerable ingenuity in several mechanical arts—as dyeing, tanning, pottery, weaving, and the manufacture of instruments and ornaments out of gold, iron, etc. They are also cleanly, and well clad, and pay some attention to the building and decoration of their houses. Their government is an absolute monarchy, or nearly so; the classes of society under the monarch being cabocees or nobles, gentry, traders, and slaves. Polygamy is allowed, but no one but the king possesses many wives. The royal number of wives is said to be precisely 3333, who, however, act also in other capacities; as bodyguards, etc. The most horrible of the Ashantee customs is that of sacrificing a number of persons on the death of every man of rank, the number of victims being regarded not only as indicating the dignity of the deceased in this world, but as determining his rank in the next. The belief in a future state is one of the strongest of their religious ideas. Regarding the origin of mankind, they, as well as other negro tribes of the Guinea Coast, have the following singular tradition:—The Great Spirit, they say, having created three white men and women, and as many black, offered the blacks the first choice of two articles which he held in his hand, one of which was a calabash, the other a sealed paper. The blacks chose the calabash, which contained gold, iron, and all the choice products of the earth; in consequence of which the negro race to this day possess these blessings in abundance: while the sealed paper falling to the share of the whites, has conferred on them a higher gift of knowledge, wherewith the contents of the calabash may be turned to account. This admission of the superiority of the whites on the part of the Ashantees appears also in their belief that the good negroes become white in the future state. No part of Africa, or even of the world, is believed to be richer in gold than Ashantee.
The kingdom of Dahomey, situated eastward from Ashantee, resembles it in the general aspect of the soil, and in many other particulars. It appears to be a recent negro state, formed by the conquest of a number of tribes by a powerful race from the interior. The government of the Dahomans, like that of the Ashantees, is an absolute monarchy; but the Dahoman king seems to be still more despotic in practice than his Ashantee neighbor. When, in obedience to some superstitious freak, he wishes to send a message to some of his deceased relatives in the other world, he delivers the message to some attendant negro, whose head is immediately cut off, as a means of forwarding him to his destination; and if the monarch has forgot any part of his communication, he immediately adds a postscript by a second messenger. The bloody custom of sacrificing a number of victims on the occasion of a great man’s funeral is practiced at Dahomey as well as Ashantee. The Dahomans have similar religious beliefs with the Ashantees: their principal object of worship, appropriately enough, is the tiger. Of late years some improvement is said to have taken place in the habits of this fierce African race.
Passing from Upper Guinea, of which Ashantee and Dahomey are the principal territories, we come next to Lower or South Guinea, which extends from the Bight of Benin to the commencement of Southern Africa, and includes the provinces or districts of Loango, Congo, Angola and Benguela. The whole of this tract of coast presents the aspect of a country degraded and deteriorated by intercourse with Europeans, to a condition worse than its original negro barbarism. Here, more than three centuries ago, the Portuguese established themselves partly as missionaries of Christianity, and partly as traders in slaves; and while their efforts in the former capacity, directed as they are by the most absurd and wretched bigotry, produced almost no beneficial effect, the curse of the slave traffic which they imported has adhered to the country with a tenacity which all the rigors of modern philanthropy cannot overcome. It is from these coasts that the exportation of negroes is said to go on at the present time more busily than it did before the abolition of the slave trade. The characteristics of the coast, and of the population which inhabit it, are determined by the brutal traffic of which it is the scene. It is impossible, within our limits, to give a description of the whole line of shore, of the small port-towns scattered along it, with their motley population of negroes, mulattoes, and slave-dealing Portuguese; or of the negro districts in the interior, where the natives fight and kidnap each other to supply the demand for slaves on the coast.
Southern Africa. Occupied with their commerce on the coasts of Western Africa, the Portuguese scarcely give a thought to the southern extremity of the continent, the aspect of which was less promising; and accordingly, for a century and a half after the famous voyage of Vasco de Gama, the district round the cape of Good Hope remained a blank waste to Europeans. The prudent and enterprising Dutch, however, having embarked in the East India trade, soon discovered the importance of the cape as a commercial station, and in the year 1650 they founded Cape Town, the capital of Cape Colony, the most flourishing of all the European settlements in Africa. Encroaching, without the least scruple, on the territories of the natives, the Dutch extended their possessions so as to include an area of upwards of 120,000 square miles, some spots of which were cultivated and planted with vines, or laid out in corn-fields, but the greater part of which was converted into immense grazing farms. Under the Dutch the natives suffered dreadfully, numbers of them being reduced to bondage, and others driven into the interior to find subsistence as they best could. In 1795 the colony was taken by the English; it was again restored to the Dutch in 1800; a second time, however, it was taken by the English, to whom it was finally ceded in the year 1815, and is now, accordingly, an English possession. Both before and after the cession of Cape Colony to the British, various travelers have undertaken journeys among the tribes inhabiting this extremity of Africa; and no accounts are more full and interesting than those of the various missionaries, who, since the beginning of the present century, have employed themselves in the arduous task of carrying the doctrines of Christianity into the heart of the native tribes. The native tribes of Southern Africa are two in number—the Hottentots and the Caffres; the former, so far as not extirpated, inhabiting the tract of country adjacent to Cape Colony on the western coast, and the other the tract adjacent to the colony on the eastern coast.